Mentoring

Be better at coaching and mentoring

Thanks to the 100 coaches initiative by Dr. Marshall Goldsmith, I was able to crystallize some thoughts on coaching/mentoring based on my past experience and what I learned from the sessions.  I am sharing this as part of my Pay It Forward contribution, feel free to use this, adapt this and share this. This can be applied in business, social and home situations. Do not coach or mentor a person who is not willing to change! It is all around wasted effort and can only result in frustration. This is not to be confused with motivating a person to reach beyond their imaginary limits. 68% of all dialogues are either about proving the superiority of the speaker or inferiority of a second or third person. Significant productivity and time savings are available if these two topics can be avoided. We all have inflated confidence in what we know. Approaching topics with true openness can help in yielding remarkable results beyond limits of current knowledge. Behavioral changes are one of the toughest changes an adult can willingly go through; their environment and stakeholders are a critical enabler for such changes to succeed. A successful person is a lot more receptive for coaching and mentoring than a struggling person. 100% of the successful athletes and sportspersons have great coaches helping them. Feedforward is more impactful than feedback, given that it focuses on how to succeed in the future! Feedforward should be positive, simple and focused. Key leadership traits to develop - ask for more…

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4th industrial revolution – Age of Convergence

We are at the dawn of the biggest, fastest and most impactful transformation in human history. Given its incredible opportunities and scale of disruption, it is critical for all of us to know the nine key tenets of these changes, start preparing ourselves to lead these changes as applicable in our own world and succeed. Fourth industrial revolution unlike the prior three, will be broad based in its scale where different technology trends converge to bring results previously unthinkable. The pace of change will be at times scary given our ability to simulate accurately and rapidly prototype. Progress as we know happens through a simple three step process, a) analyse the problem, b) develop solutions, c) operationalise and optimise. Let’s look at how some of the major technology trends will converge for the next phase of tremendous progress; a quantum leap for humanity. Analysing the problem, is less of a problem now given these three recent trends: Machine Learning and big data solutions are being applied to analyse vast amounts of data (created over the past decades), helping us to discover finer nuances of big problems as well as to recognize problems we were not previously aware of. From analysing machine performance, economic trends, weather patterns, environmental data, animal behavior, human habits and many more, we understand problems a lot better today than ever before. Gaming and expansion of human analytical skills – More than 30,000 years of time is spent every day playing digital games! Strategy based games are scaling up the analytical…

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A Quantum Leap in business?

What is a Quantum Leap?It is a sudden (almost magical) scaling observed in sub atomic levels where electrons jump to the next orbit around the nucleus, on being prompted by an external energy. As a comparison, it is like Earth moving to Mars' orbit in a microsecond without going through the 250 million kilometers in between.Scientists have been fascinated by the parallels in quantum world and the visible world, where many of the traditional scientific theories are being put to test given the findings on duality, entanglement, observer effect and others. It’s a fascinating field and for the uninitiated, I do recommend many YouTube videos for beginners on the topic.Quantum Leap in business?This happens when some businesses magically seem to scale beyond belief defying traditional theories of management. I first experienced this in 1997 when a small course correction in a two person travel agency, sky rocketed the revenue in a matter of weeks. More recently, I was at Happies, a tiny budget restaurant in Berlin, with 12 chairs, limited menu choices and a very passionate owner! What is surprising is that Happies is at the Top 3 of TripAdvisor ratings, beating 7000+ bigger restaurants in Berlin, a feat they reached within a few months of their opening and staying there for over 4 years now.There has been countless other examples of Quantum Leaps we have seen over the past 20+ years. In fact, four of the top six most valuable companies in the world today were formed during this period having…

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